For certain age groups, such as the elderly, or people that engage in certain dangerous activities, such as firefighters and soldiers, it is desirable to track and understand human activity automatically. For example, a person that has fallen may be injured, unconscious, etc., and needs emergency assistance. In such circumstances, relying on the person to initiate a call to a public safety access point (PSAP) (e.g., 9-1-1 emergency services, an automated emergency call center, etc.) is not practical. Moreover, even if the person is capable of placing the call, the PSAP may be located outside the geographical jurisdiction for providing emergency services. An emergency services person located at a PSAP may need to manually place a second call to the local fire station, police, or Emergency Medical Services (EMS) squad, thereby wasting precious time that could be used to save the person's life. Further, if the person is unconscious, they would not be able to relate the nature of their injuries nor their physical location.
As a result, many activity detection systems and devices have been developed. Unfortunately, such systems require several sensors to be distributed in several locations on or in the vicinity of a user, which is not convenient for the user nor is it practical to implement when the user is in an unfamiliar environment. Moreover, most if not all conventional activity detection systems require continuous monitoring and classification, thereby consuming large amounts of processing and electrical power. Further, such systems have a limited ability to learn from prior events (i.e., detecting and eliminating false positive and negatives).
Other systems and devices have been developed which attempt to locate the injured person and route that person's location to an appropriate local PSAP. One such system is described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,177,397 (hereinafter the '397 patent). The '397 patent discloses a system for routing emergency services calls from call centers to PSAPs, and to provide data in connection with such calls (e.g., latitude and longitude, street address, vehicle collision data, etc.) related to the caller. In particular, the system of the '397 patent provides an emergency services complex (ESC) that has a map of PSAP boundaries covering a large area. Unfortunately, the system of the '397 patent is only concerned with deriving caller information provided from within a telephone network and initiated by an ordinary cell phone or land line, such as information derived from a caller ID, which may or may not be accurate.
US Patent Application Publication No. 2006/0234727 (hereinafter the '727 application) describes a system for making an emergency voice call from a portable computing device. The portable computing device communicates with a cellular base station. A cellular base station identifier that corresponds to the cellular base station is determined. A PSAP associated with the cellular base station identifier is determined. The PSAP identifier corresponds to a PSAP responsible for handling emergency calls being routed through the cellular base station. A voice call destination number is identified. The voice call destination number is associated with the PSAP identifier. The voice call destination number is utilized to communicate with the PSAP. The system of the '727 application is configured to determine a person's physical location based on physical parameters, and from that location identify the most local PSAP to contact.
Unfortunately, the systems described in both the '397 patent and the '727 application do not automatically provide a diagnosis of the nature of the emergency event without the verbal aid of the caller.